


Homecoming

by 4RU



Category: Borderlands
Genre: AU, F/F, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 15:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4568970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4RU/pseuds/4RU
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Athena's execution hadn't been stopped in time?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homecoming

Despite everything, the Raiders are surprisingly helpful. They answer her questions, as truthful as can be, and when she asks for details they don’t hesitate to give them. She’d thought she’d feel… something. But no. All that she experiences is just this gut-wrenching numbness. Not even sadness or anger.

At the edge of Sanctuary, where the wind howls and one false step means plummeting to your death, Janey stops walking. She asks if this is the spot, but the question is rhetorical. It can be none other – the ground is still stained with blood, and she counts no less than three bullet casings. Regardless, the Raider confirms it was, and it is then that the first sob wracks her shoulders.

There is no body, but then didn’t expect there to be one. No doubt she had been pitched over the side of the city, left to fill the bellies of desperate natives or wildlife. Janey toys with the idea of seeking out her armor, or at the very least the shield, but decides against it. Impractical.

She takes a seat near the bloodstain, with her long legs dangling over the concrete where the road ends. Two girlfriends, dead. And she’d been unable to save either of them. Guilt washes over her anew, coils uncomfortably in her gut. Her heart thunders at her ribcage. She feels sick to her stomach.

When she began crying, she doesn’t know, only that the tears fall hot and heavy down her cheeks, her neck, along the contours of her scars. She presses her hands to her face, curls in on herself, as if that might help. It doesn’t. It only muffles her shaky whimpers of Athena’s name.

In the end, when the tears stop, Janey gets to her feet and turns around. Sanctuary seems smaller than Concordia, but twice as populated. She takes in the curvature of the buildings, the people milling about, and wonders if the gladiator closed her eyes, or glared furiously ahead at her murderers. She’s positive it was the latter.

Her fingers curl around the grip of her old pistol. She’d only used the thing once before, what felt like a lifetime ago, when the surface of the moon rocked and shook and creatures that belched fire descended upon a woman she’d sworn she’d marry. Her first failure. To her, it seemed only fitting the same gun would mark the second.

By the time the sun shines down on Sanctuary, there’s just another empty casing and another bloodstain on the ground.


End file.
